Rosa Freedman told to 'Choose your words carefully'

[NancyDrawed]

Article in Daily Mail

[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9736211/Professor-shares-letter-Reading-student-warning-gender-critical-talks-problematic.html]]

@RestingStitchFace

What a privileged, self righteous brat.

This. 1000x this.

I work in HE. This type of behaviour is not rare. The tone of some of the emails I receive is appalling. There is a particular breed of student who feel they have a right to speak to you like shit whilst simultaneously bewailing so called emotional injuries if anyone says anything remotely challenging to them. It really fucks me off.

My close friend is a teaching fellow and the way the students speak to her is absolutely shocking. Literally 'I have paid for this!'

A lot of them seem to think their grades are entirely down to their teaching rather than related to their own talents or hard work.

@MichelleScarn

We have a duty of care to students and it's reasonable to take their well-being into account Well i think this should be the case, however when this There is a particular breed of student who feel they have a right to speak to you like shit whilst simultaneously bewailing so called emotional injuries if anyone says anything remotely challenging to them is also the case, its quite hard to see what's 'reasonable' for me.

Well on the occasions when I've witnessed students do this with academic or administrative colleagues I have absolutely called them out on it. If they bewailed any emotional injuries in consequence, they didn't do it in my presence - they made their apologies, and they've a right to their private feelings.

I don't feel entitled to lash out at students as a class because of entitled behaviour from their contemporaries. They are individuals.

This individual was writing to her on behalf of her colleagues which takes it out of the realms of a student issue. Protecting this student was the responsibility of the academic staff who are working with him on his plans to identify 'issues.'

It's not up to prof freedman to protect someone who has sent her a threatening message on behalf of himself and some of the academic staff

@Looksgood I did say a 'particular breed of student' i.e a sub-group of student. I am in no way suggesting it is all students. I work with many many fine and upstanding ones. It's just this unpleasant minority, like Alex Wareham, who unfortunately give the others a bad name.

@Chrysanthemum5

This individual was writing to her on behalf of her colleagues which takes it out of the realms of a student issue. Protecting this student was the responsibility of the academic staff who are working with him on his plans to identify 'issues.'

It's not up to prof freedman to protect someone who has sent her a threatening message on behalf of himself and some of the academic staff

So he says. Could be staff are using student to stir things up - despicable behaviour if so but I've seen it done. Or student has contacted staff / diversity champions or some such to disclose issues of concern, or is taking part in a focus group etc.

That email makes the staff involved look bad if it's the first scenario, absolutely. But if so, and if the student is truthful about their collusion, I'd blame them more than the student. There's a power balance and it looks probable he's being manipulated. But they aren't being named and shamed on twitter.

It would be better to put appropriate boundaries back in place and put the student back in his place through university disciplinary proceedings than to play it out in public - for complain of those staff as a higher priority too.

Yes, sorry if I misrepresented your point @RestingStitchFace - just feel even the most entitled student better dealt with directly and professionally.

It sounds very much as though Prof Freedman is at the end of her tether. TRAs constantly name and shame women, post abuse and post messages inciting violence.

Is what she did professional? It would be argued in different times, not. But we cannot wind the clock back to a time of mutual respect and deference to highly educated professionals. It sounds as though this student thinks of Prof Freedman as a service provider... And broken appliance.

As far as I can tell:

nobody knows if this student is undergraduate or postgraduate status;

none of us know if this is a student who is already known to Prof. Freedman;

the student was writing on university business, describing it as part of a collaborative activity with several professors (it is AW's own fault that this is at odds with AW's disclaimer about not representing a group or society and placing it within a more investigative body of unspecified powers);

AW's text is disrespectful as well as aggressive as it stands. This is the more so for one who affects familiarity with Prof Freedman's difficult history that has arisen from her human rights perspective on what is happening to the rights of women as a sex class.

Prof. Freedman proved remarkably prescient of the current state of affairs in 2018:

THREAD: I have been thinking about why some students feel that it is okay to act abusively (sometimes criminally) towards one another and towards academics with whom they disagree on difficult and important issues. Academia and academic freedom enables difficult discussions about issues affecting society, and allows for respectful and reasoned discourse and analysis based on specific evidence. That is the nature of the job, and it brings with it many opportunities and many responsibilities.
I work in highly contentious and politicised spaces, but in recent months I have experienced and witnessed things that I did not know existed in academia. The toxicity of these discussions, the shutting down of debates, the spurious and defamatory allegations, and the deeply personal attacks – this goes against everything we value in academia… [thread continues]

twitter.com/GoonerProf/status/1055605167624732673

@Tanith

He’s a silly kid. What Rosa should have done is report him to the University authorities and let them deal with it. Reading University is very good at dealing with this: Rosa has acknowledged as much herself.

No, it is not the done thing from a student to a professor (no doubt his tutor will be telling him that!), but I feel very uncomfortable that his details were published on Twitter.
His email could be interpreted as a threat; it could just as easily have been badly worded.

I totally agree

I did like one of the comments under the DM article- "Big non-specific gender sibling is watching you"

Rosa had every right to publish his name and university email. He’s in no danger from feminists, as he well knows. It’s TRAs who attack with violence, rape threats, doxxing, cancelling and trying to get people sacked. They have got away with openly abusing women for far too long.

[quote DialSquare]It's the entitlement. Who the fuck does he think he is.

This made me laugh though.

mobile.twitter.com/context_outside/status/1409824401487384582[/quote]
Brilliant

staffy that's just brilliant!!

Love that tweet.

@Flippin

I absolutely support Rosa’s naming this person. This shit needs sunlight, women have been fighting off the most ridiculous accusations for years now, it is only right to hold light to these little attacks. Show them for what they are.

I agree too. Men urinating on her door, it is just disgusting behaviour. I would be utterly ashamed of a son who behaved like this , and hauling him over the coals.

@thinkingaboutLangCleg

Rosa had every right to publish his name and university email. He’s in no danger from feminists, as he well knows. It’s TRAs who attack with violence, rape threats, doxxing, cancelling and trying to get people sacked. They have got away with openly abusing women for far too long.

Not exposing students to physical danger is a pretty low bar, though. You have comments in.the Daily Mail calling for his expulsion, at least one tweet threatening physical violence. Absolutely agree there's clear blue water between TRA and GC typical conduct on social media, but I don't believe that justifies posting this on social media when internal disciplinary measures were available.

That tweet is so good “NOT Estate Management..”

'protecting students' issueing threats to staff by keeping it in house sounds similar what the catholic Church did with paedophilic priests. In neither case is the victim properly considered.

Perhaps she is concerned about her physical safety and this is a kind of “if anything happens to me, this is who did it!”

I would say that if you’ve had your door pissed on purposefully you’d be in a state of anxiety.

@Tibtom

'protecting students' issueing threats to staff by keeping it in house sounds similar what the catholic Church did with paedophilic priests. In neither case is the victim properly considered.

Not really - she's said the university has genuinely addressed these cases.

He sent a letter
It became her property to do with as she saw fit
Perhaps he should have chosen his words more carefully

@Looksgood I agree with those calling for his expulsion though. He has clearly made threats towards a member of staff, there's reams of threads on mn about how university students should be held culpable for their behaviour, including a recent one where posters have encouraged an op to report unpleasant behaviour in a houseshare with the expectation this could result in expulsion.

Not really - she's said the university has genuinely addressed these cases.

Only when harm has already occurred, the university have not prevented this abuse from happening in the first place. And it's happened over and over again.

It's a pretty unpleasant landscape out there.

Prof. Freedman has publicised this, we can only speculate how many academics are not at that stage yet. Her thread from 2018 that I posted above indicates how long such harassment has been in progress for her and that people still feel emboldened to do this (including her colleagues in concern with AW).

Chris Whitty has been harassed and put in a headlock. I see some news organisations downplay the gravity of that.

There's a lot of minimisation on display. My conflict of interest is that I've been stalked in my life - aggressively and including at a time when it was minimised by society and before it was a crime. I know what it's like to have people telling you that you've misunderstood and siding with that person even beyond the time that they've harmed you.

I think we are just reading it differently - I don't see an unambiguous threat at all. I see a clumsy attempt at debate. I'd rather see a different reaction from a student wellbeing perspective, but she's within the law and I haven't been in her shoes. She is clearly very anxious about it and feeling vulnerable after her recent operation. I hope the university is looking after her well at the moment.

It’s a modern day witch hunt. It’s just in another name.

I think calling these people out like this brat Alex Wrexham is exactly what needs to be done.

They are counting on women to “be nice” and let them run roughshod over us. They are expecting us to just be silent and if we don’t then they will threaten us until they take what they want. If this is not typical of male intimidation tactics and a common tactic of bullies, then I don’t know what is.